Role Of Nana In A Thousand Splendid Suns

What fuels the desire for power?
From the start of A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini, we can see that there is a great struggle for power in the book. It all begins with Nana, who has the most power over Mariam, one of our main characters. She’s controlling, bossy and manipulative. Nana’s desire for power is fueled by her past; the loss she endured early in her life, “Mariam knew the story from Nana herself... Mariam could tell by the wistful light in her eyes that she had been happy. Perhaps for the only time in her life, during those days leading up to her wedding…” , and her jealousy of the life Jalil lives with his other wives and legitimate children (Hosseini 9). She uses the word ‘harami’ to put Mariam in a certain place where

she can never escape. She wanted her to know that “...a harami was an unwanted thing; that she, Mariam, was an illegitimate person who would never have legitimate claim to the things other people had, things such as love, family, home, acceptance,” (Hosseini 4). Due to the fact that Mariam is a harami, her life will never feel “real” to her, being illegitimate to Jalil. Jalil’s desire for power comes from his shame of Mariam and Nana and his now-tainted status in society. This, along with his wives’ wishes, ultimately leads him to sell Mariam off to Rasheed, a shoemaker in Kabul.
Rasheed’s desire for power is fueled by the loss of his son. He sees Mariam as a vessel to give him another child and when again, she is unable to reproduce, he beats her and says, “ ‘[n]ow you know what you have given me in this marriage. Bad food, and nothing else, “ (Hosseini 104). He also asserts his power over her by saying, “[w]here I come from, a woman's face is her husband's business only,“ and forcing her to wear a burqa wherever they go (Hosseini 70). When Laila comes into the picture, he is again fueled by the loss of his son and his lust to pursue her for marriage.
Rasheed is able to gain power once again by effectively pitting Mariam and Laila against each other.

He begins with, “[t]he point is, I am your husband now, and it falls on me to guard not only your honor but ours, yes, our nang and namoos. That is the husband's burden. You let me worry about that," and ends the conversation with, “[w]ell, one does not drive a Volga and a Benz in the same manner. That would be foolish, wouldn't it?" (Hosseini 223). First, by talking to Laila about honor and how it’s a husband’s job to be in power, he is taking control and possession over her entire person. Then, when he compares Laila and Mariam to cars and calls Laila the better of the two, he insults Mariam. This leads both girls to fight, letting Rasheed take control of them both with no

resistance.

Which factors sway an individual’s choices between passion and responsibility?
Mariam’s idea to go see Jalil against her mother’s wishes was a choice out of passion. She had always loved her father more and didn’t feel it was her responsibility to stay with her mother for the rest of her life, that “she was tired of being an instrument, of being lied to, laid claim to, used. That she was sick of Nana twisting the truth of their life and making her, Mariam, another of her grievances against the world,” (Hosseini 28). Even sleeping outside on his doorstep shows how passionate she she felt about being a part of his family, and it was that sense of wanting to belong that fueled that passion. Mariam begins to compare herself to his children because she thinks that “[o]ne day soon, Mariam decided, she would tell Jalil these things. And when he heard, when he saw how much she missed him when he was gone, he would surely take her with him. He would bring her to Herat, to live in his house, just like his other children,” (Hosseini 24). Nana’s suicide was also a choice of passion, done either out of fear or love. Perhaps she was distressed at the growing relationship between Jalil and Mariam or maybe she thought that there was a possibility that Jalil would claim Mariam as his rightful daughter once he was forced to take care of her, possibly giving Mariam a better life than she would have had with Nana.
As we come to find out, Jalil has not taken the latter path because “[f]or the first time, Mariam could hear [Jalil] with Nana’s ears. She could hear so clearly now the insincerity that had always lurked beneath, the hollow, false assurances,” (Hosseini 38). Jalil sends Mariam away to Rasheed out of perceived responsibility to his family and wives and out of shame. Mariam being illegitimate taints both his reputation as a successful businessman and his faith, as he reproduced without marrying Nana.
Laila, on the other side of the story, does not leave with Tariq out of responsability to her family. She knows it would leave her parents heartbroken, especially after they had already lost their two sons in the war when she tells Tariq, “It's my father I can't leave… I'm all he has left. His heart couldn't take it either,’’ (Hosseini 184). Laila agrees to marry Rasheed out of responsibility to herself and her and Tariq’s baby, Aziza. She knows that there is no one she can count on now and the only way she can preserve herself and the baby to stay alive is by marrying him. She even goes as far as to fake her virginity for the sake of her child, “... Laila quietly reached beneath the mattress for the knife she had hidden there earlier. With it, she punctured the pad of her index finger. Then she lifted the blanket and let her finger bleed on the sheets where they had Lain together,” (Hosseini 220).
Mariam killing Rasheed is interesting because it was done out of both responsibility and passion. Mariam was saving Laila’s life and she felt responsible for her in a motherly way. Before the killing, she thinks, “He's going to kill her, she thought. He really means to. And Mariam could not, would not, allow that to happen. He’d taken so much from her in twenty-seven years of marriage. She would not watch him take Laila too,” (Hosseini 348), but she also killed out of passion for being so angry at Rasheed’s abuse and treatment of her for so long, because “...it occurred to her that this was the first time that she was deciding the course of her own life,” (Hosseini 349).

From a victim’s perspective, can there ever be justice?
Mariam was a victim of Nana since the start of her life.

Nana constantly shames her for being who she is and trying to make her feel guilty for just existing. Mariam seems to think that it is justice to leave her Nana and follow her own heart to follow Jalil to Herat. Later in life, Mariam is once again a victim but now of Rasheed. Mariam believes that Rasheed’s abuse is just due to the fact that she feels guilty for causing her Nana’s suicide, being unable to reproduce, being a woman in the first place, and for being born a harami. This all changes once Mariam realizes that she cares for Laila and her children, and that she no longer sees the justness in Rasheed’s abusiveness towards her. When Mariam is being put to death for the murder of Rasheed, she finally finds real personal justice and closure in the fact that she was loved in her life and that she was able to love back. In her final moments, Mariam thinks about the entirety of her life, “Mariam wished for so much in those final moments. Yet as she closed her eyes, it was not regret any longer but a sensation of abundant peace that washed over her. She thought of her entry into this world, the harami child of a lowly villager, an unintended thing, a pitiable, regrettable accident. A weed. And yet she was leaving the world as a woman who had loved and been loved back. She was leaving it as a friend, a companion, a guardian. A mother. A person of consequence at last. No. It was not so bad, Miriam thought, that she

should die this way. Not so bad. This was a legitimate end to a life of illegitimate belongings,” (Hosseini 370). Although Mariam is a victim her whole life, she’s able to find justice in saving the ones she loves the most and giving herself up for them is the ultimate sacrifice.
Laila is a victim of her family and of Rasheed. She thinks “[s]he would never leave her mark on Mammy's heart the way her brothers had, because Mammy's heart was like a pallid beach where Laila's footprints would forever wash away beneath the waves of sorrow that swelled and crashed, swelled and crashed,” (Hosseini 144). She constantly feels as though she is living in the shadow of her brothers who, in her mother’s eyes, are much more honorable and great than her. Laila ends up becoming a victim of circumstance when the bomb hits her home and both her parents are killed. She was supposed to have been inside her house when it hit, but fate left her outside when the bomb hit. Being wounded and alone and a woman in Afghanistan at the time is highly unsafe. When Laila becomes conscious again and realizes that Rasheed has taken her into his home, Laila is able to take back control of her own will by accepting his proposal to marry him, and for her, that is a little bit of justice for her parents’ memory to uphold. Laila knows that she will be safer as one of his wives than she will be alone on the street. She once again becomes a victim when she gives birth to a girl, Aziza, and not a boy for Rasheed (although she does later give birth to a boy, Zalmai). Aziza likewise becomes a victim of Rasheed, being essentially left to die in a hot, dark room, and by being unloved by him. The justice for Laila and Aziza is the escape with Tariq to a better home until the war gets better. The new life that they are able to lead is just within itself. Their hope is what makes the past the past and what helps them to move on.
From an outside point of view, the U.S. is a victim of Bin Laden and 9/11, and the justice that the U.S. felt was right for that event was to declare war on Afghanistan. And even then, Afghanistan is the victim, because it’s constantly being taken over by someone new, in A Thousand Splendid Suns’ case, by the Soviets and the Taliban. Laila’s father constantly alludes to this when he speaks about the outside events taking place, “[a]nd that, ...is the story of our country, one invasion after another...Macedonians. Saddanians. Arabs. Mongols. Now the Soviets. But we're like those walls up there. Battered, and nothing pretty to look at, but still standing,” (Hosseini 146).